Lost and Found in Beijing

Tiananmen Square, Beijing. Photo © Bob Jones

‘So let’s get this straight.’  As a lone traveller, I was talking to myself.

‘You’re standing in the middle of Tiananmen Square. It’s 2 a.m. You’ve mislaid your wallet and phone in a pokey little bar in a hutong you’ll probably never find again.  We’d sat and drank, and drank again. Far too much. Waved and hugged goodbye and headed for the subway, reaching the gates just before the last train. No wallet. No phone.

‘You couldn’t recall where the friends you were enjoying the evening with live, or the name of the hotel where you’re staying. It was somewhere in one of the suburbs to the west of downtown Beijing. Oh, and you don’t speak a word of Mandarin.’

So, the last part wasn’t totally true.  My Chinese extended to all the basics – Hello, Goodbye, How much, Not want! and Thanks.  But in my daily lessons, I’d made heavy weather of the fiendishly impervious characters.

The traffic was easing. Tiananmen Square was empty of tourists and bathed in a yellowy mist.  A street cleaner with a mask shuffled a brush over my feet, darting a brief glance. Her curiosity was stifled swiftly by the need to finish the job and get home to the warmth of her home, a bowl of Jiaozi dumplings and vinegar. The call was strong. 

I toyed with the idea of trying to convince her that I should come home with her, at least till sunrise when I would maybe return to the hutong in the hope of trying to find the bar, and hopefully my wallet and phone.  By then the sprawling Beijing subway system would be lurching into action, and all would be well.  I could at least find my way back to the hotel and explain my dilemma. She scuffed my shoes again with her brush and muttered something that sounded far from complimentary.

It was hard to tell whether the soldiers in the sentry post were real or not.  If real, then they must have seen me arrive in the square, rotate to find my bearings, and shrug.  They had been standing like wax works, and at first it had sounded like they were listening to a radio in their little cabins.  A faint high-pitched voice, whispery and plaintiff.  But it was their own voices, used to quell the boredom of a long night’s duty.  A song of home. A song of commitment to family and China. More probably a Mandopop song being memorised in readiness for an evening with friends in a K-bar.

Looking carefully you could see a slight twitch of uncertainty in their eyes.  An encounter with foreigners was best avoided. It was only trouble, a stand-off of mutual incomprehension.

I sat on the edge of a planter to assess the situation.

What did I know? Tiananmen Square. Bustling by day. Deserted by night. The heart of a sprawling city of almost 22 million people. Bordered to the north by the Forbidden City – Palace Museum complex. A cheery face of iconic leader Mao Zedong, staring across the square towards his mausoleum. A grid system, with concentric circles of ring roads. My hotel was west.  Exactly how far I didn’t know.  A Chinese proverb came to mind.

‘A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.’

RJ